Also on the bill, I'll be reading a great piece of writing that I haven't unearthed in years. It's worth it, I swear! :) Red Door on the left bring the sketch comedy--it's Alexia and John, my co-stars from Young Frankenstein. And Jim F, the man who makes so much of the Dark Room go-go-go, will have his banjo on his knee.

All goes down Friday, December 29th at the Dark Room in San Francisco's Mission District. Show starts at 8pm.

1996 Portland Santacon 10th Anniversary Party

It was the Cacophonist of times, the first Santa Rampage planned for outside the City by the Bay. And vision of riots danced in The Man's heads. Cuz Saint Nicholaus x 10 x 10 x 2 soon would be there.

And shit.

Yup, 200 Santas invaded Portland (some were indigineous, actually)10 years ago. And a bunch of this city's usual suspects were ofcourse leading the charge. The list reads like a Ho's Ho of SFCacophony. Melmouth, Geekboy, Cortez, Holmes, Burke, John, andof course that damn Beale guy. With his video camera!

It was before my time. Just before my time. I was here but Ihadn't quite drunk the water yet. :) I went the next year to LA.You can see a very quick cameo of Danielle, early on--she didn't goto Portland though, it's in pre-launch festivities.

I believe that this video, assembled by Scott Beale, Stu Mangrum,and Scott's voiceover guy friend, is the best encapsulation of themysterious, beautiful, intoxicating and creative mischief thatwe breed out here in Norton's city. Practitioners of forgottensocial arts and biters of feeding hands, the post-something, semi-comatose cultural criticism of the Drunken Masters, all hailSanta(s) in Perversitus Bacchanalium Uber Alles. And shit.

Whenever friends came to visit and wanted to know what I'd beendoing, I would play them this video. It was much easier to explainthat way. It's like this. Every weekend. *Sigh*.

10 years ago? No way. You're lying. Not every weekend is likethis anymore. It's probably still going on, and I'm just notsticking my foot in it as often. But on Tuesday, we'll get a nicefat taste of Vintage 96 Cacophony. Wear something you can get messy.Like say a holiday outfit from Oriental Trading Company (remember, one size fits none.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

I have another blog that I've been playing with. Don't take it personally. It's from the Sixapart folks who make Movable Type. I guess it's their MySpace play or whatever. Whatever. It's cool cuz it easily enables adding multimedia to blog posts. And I need that to be easy. See the heavy textual thrust of this here page.

Yes, at some point in the future I'll make this bit of .com real estate prettier, better, more contemporarily tech-enabled. But for now I'll utilize the pre-fab goodness of the Vox platform. And link to it from here to keep some flow going. Oh managing my many blog personnas. I deserve a vacatation, huh?

Scott has always been dedicated to fanning the mutant gorgeous flames of underground culture. Like me, he came from a distant planet--his is called Ohio, mine is known as Virginia. From a distance we used to observe this thing called "culture" (which grows incredibly well, thrives in fact, here in San Francisco). We'd also get pieces of culture transported to us through a complicated mechanism called "The Postal System". Anyway, once you get to taste the real thing, once you are in the greenhouse as it were... it's intoxicating, you appreciate being here. You want to cultivate it. You want to document it and to help it propogate.

Anyway, that's my reaction. That was Scott's reaction. He made a documentary. He started a company. He shot video of everything cool & weird he found that was going on. He started an email list and a telephone bulletin board, both of which told people what was UP promoting the promoters, enabling the participants. Oh, and far from least important, he made friends.

I think in the big picture, what it's all about is creating opportunities for interesting events to be populated by interested people. For creativity and hard work to be appreciated. And for dreams to be realized, dammit. There's more to say on this theme. I'll have to save it for another proper and truly Blog-type post. When it's not so late and I don't have a flight to catch in the early AM.

Anyway, to note that Scott didn't do these things all by himself. Danielle, my girlfriend & partner in art and crime for getting close to a decade, was one of Scott's first collaborators in event production and related activities. Others like Pippi & Phil with "The Number", and all the artists and Cacophonists who were the subject of the emails of what was going on. But Scott has always had a knack for organization, design, detail, and --wait for it-- follow-through(!!!) which many have lacked. He can run a fucking business for one thing. That's craziest thing. Look I gotta crash now. More at a later time.

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Califone is probaly Danielle and my favorite band in the world (which is really saying something, as anyone whose seen my music collection knows). They are playing tonight at Bottom of the Hill in San Francisco.

I have two standard descriptions for Califone's music:

Tom Waits' "Gun Street Girl" goes to art school

You find a pair of seemingly ancient cowboy boots in an anonymous thrift store. There's something compelling about them. You start to wear them obsessively. You keep figuring out new functions, bits of magic, they can do. Disappearing your enemies. Giving you control of wasps and locusts (but not honeybees). Now you always have silver coin in your pocket. Eventually, you realize they are the made from the robot snake in Blade Runner. They have a benign curse upon them. And they go with absolutely nothing, but still somehow "work".

You can put these guys on a bill or in a mix w/ the likes of Son Volt and Calexico, very easily. But in concert they also get into noisy, effects-laden jams that no one can wrap a box or a label around. Their renderings of halluciated (sic) blues, roots, and more precisely the roots of blues electrified. Fry the country killer in the chair and turn him into a super hero. Yup. And the lyrics are fine fine.

The show opens this Friday, 10/6, and plays all of October on Fri-Sat at 8pm, and on Sundays at 3pm. I really highly recommend catching the earlier weeks when tickets will be easier to get--the last couple weekends always sell out.

It's fantastic and includes a lot of great talents involved with last October's great show at the Dark Room (which Scott also documented).

Come check it out!! Tickets are available at the door or in advance from Ticketweb.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

All-things-movie blog Cinematical pointed to this fun list of the films from 2005 with the most "goofs" (continuity mistakes, "plot holes", etc). SWETRSOne-hundred and Thirty Nine mistakes in total, according to the folks at Movie Mistakes. It's a running list including contributions by visitors to the site, so the tally changes, and more recent or less popular films are going to be lower (for now) cuz they've had less scrutiny. King Kong, which I saw last night, has forty-six. But you gotta figure that's gonna grow. [FYI, IMDB has a much shorter list Rev o' Sith, but I guess they aren't as dedicated as the Movie Mistakes folks to that task.] Also, the number sometimes decreases, because the site allows corrections of supposed mistakes. The Corrections page for Sith may be more fun to read than the mistakes page.

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

I'm watching Long Riders right now. RIGHT NOW!! A great film, just the cowboy flick you always want to watch. Hero outlaws. Daring robberies. An amazing gun battle. A tough guy knife fight. A tragic ending. It's one of my all-time favorites. I recommend it for a double feature with Outlaw Josey Wales--which is also set in Missouri. And as many folks know, that's very high praise coming from me.